| Activity | Heer was one of the most eminent naturalists of his time. From the mid-1830s he was connected with the University of Zurich and was also founder and Director of the Botanical Gardens in Zurich. His researches centered on paleobotany, especially of Tertiary formations in glacial and periglacial environments, but he also gave his attention to entomology (of both living and fossil forms), and to phytogeography. Several of his books became important classics in their subjects. One of the important results of Heer's studies was a new awareness that the climatic regimes at high latitudes had not always been as dominated by cold temperatures as they are now, and he was led to postulate that the Arctic had been an important center of radiation for present day forms and their ancestors. Heer was a friendly and well-liked man, and his industry, despite health problems, is hinted at by the fact that he described over sixteen hundred new species in his three major paleobotanical works alone.
In 1834 he was hired as a privatdozent at the University of Zurich and he also founded and became the director of the Botanical Gardens there. In 1835 he is promoted to associate professor and in 1840 he begins his studies in palaeobotany. In 1845 he founds and is made president of Zurich's Society of Agriculture and Horticulture. From 1852 - 1883 he was professor of Botany at the University of Zurich and in 1855 he began teaching taxonomic botany at the Technische Hochschule in Zurich. In 1873 he received the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London |